Turning a DS into a Game Boy Advance

The venerable Game Boy is dead – and has been for a long time – after being replaced by the DS, DSi, DSi XL, and the 3DS. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing of value to the old Game Boy catalog; Pokemon Red/Blue is still as much fun as it was 15 years ago, and the game play of Advance Wars is still superb.

The donor machine was a broken first gen DS with a broken top screen. [Maarten] removed the top screen, did a tiny bit of Bondoing, moved the speaker, and gave his new toy a bright orange paint job.

Now [Maarten] has a modern version of the best portable system ever created, packed full of more powerful hardware and a much more capacious battery. Sure, it’s not a build that requires rewiring everything, but it’s still an awesome build for GBA aficionados.

I had a friend that broke the top screen of his DS so he ripped the top off to use it as a GBA. It didn’t work after that for anything… I never said he was a smart friend. Anyways, neat little hack, good way to sort of recycle hardware rather than throw it out. Personally I would prefer the gameboy micro given the choice.